TOKYO: Taro Yamada of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party tendered his resignation Wednesday as parliamentary vice minister over an extramarital affair, senior government officials said.

Yamada, 56, who serves as parliamentary vice minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology and for postdisaster reconstruction, has admitted his affair with a woman in her 20s, weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun reported in its electronic edition the same day.

His resignation is expected to be approved Thursday.

Yamada will be the first to resign among the ministers, state ministers and parliamentary vice ministers appointed by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a cabinet reshuffle in September.

The resignation is expected to deal a blow to the Kishida administration, whose public support ratings in media polls are around the lowest levels since he took office in 2021.

In a statement posted on his website, Yamada admitted the affair and apologized. Meanwhile, he denied reported payment of cash to the woman.

“I will do my best to regain the public’s trust through my attitude, not just my words,” he said, declining to resign as a lawmaker.

Yamada first joined the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, in 2012 as a candidate from the now-defunct Your Party. He was awarded a seat vacated by a party peer disqualified from the chamber.

In the 2019 Upper House election, Yamada ran as an LDP candidate and won his second term. After actively using the internet in his campaign, he garnered about 540,000 votes, the second-largest number among the LDP candidates in the poll.

His resignation “will inevitably affect the administration,” an LDP member who has served as minister said. At the Diet, the budget committees of both chambers are set to have full-scale debates soon.

A senior official of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan said that the main opposition force will grill Kishida over his responsibility for appointing Yamada.

JIJI Press